Wedding Primer.

The word is going around that there’s a wedding coming up in London soon and that there are a lot of Americans coming over to see it, or watch it on TV.

Now if you are one of those people you may well feel comfortable coming over to England because you’ve heard we all speak English, which we do. Nevertheless you might still be in for a shock as there’s a lot of English spoken in London you might not be able to understand.

Fing is you could be sitting in the Smoke on your aris, on your tobler with no-one to pork and chalk to, finkin that all the locals are antiseptic. Capice?

This is an example of the local dialect known as Cockney Rhyming slang


What's a Cockney? Well a true a true Cockney is someone born within the sound of Bow Bells. (St Mary-le-Bow Church in Cheapside, London). However the term Cockney is now loosely applied to many born outside this area as long as they have a ‘Cockney’ accent or a Cockney heritage.

What's Rhyming Slang?
Rhyming Slang phrases are derived from taking an expression which rhymes with a word and then using that expression instead of the word. For example the word ‘look’ rhymes with ‘butcher's hook’ which is used to substitute for the word look. In many cases the rhyming word is omitted - so you won't find too many Londoners having a ‘bucher's hook’, but you might find a few having a ‘butcher's’ at your scotch eggs (legs) when you pass by.

So translating our sentence: ‘Fing is you could be sitting in the Smoke on your aris, on your tobler with no-one to pork and chalk to, finkin that all the locals are antiseptic. Capice?’

The Smoke = London (rule 2 not all slang has to rhyme)
Aris = Aristotle rhymes with bottle – bottle and glass rhymes with ass or arse as we say here (rule 3 some rhyming slang can be multi-layered and complex)
Tobler = Toblerone = on your own
Pork and chalk = talk
Antiseptic – septic tank = Yank, so someone who is antiseptic is anti-American.

Here are some of the basics to help you get by:


Minces (Mince pies)


Bristols (Bristol City)


Khyber (Khyber Pass)


Elizabeth (Elizabeth Regina)

So if you’re coming for the wedding you don’t want to get caught out if you need an urgent Brad Pitt do you?